South states are roaring high in Education Development Index

Recently released Education Development Index (EDI) reveals that again south states are roaring high and loud this year too. There is a big development leap between the two sides of the country. While the south side continued their march ahead with the development in various field like education, infrastructure etc. the Hindi hinterland states pursue their struggle at the bottom line.

The index report also highlighted that Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) has acted as a catalyst and boomed the development of the south states of the country. But despite of their heroic efforts states like Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh didn't even come any close to achieving the target.

North states are struggling to get to the top

EDI judged the states on four parameters- access, infrastructure, teachers and outcomes.

EDI, done by the National university of Educational Planning and Administration on the basis of mammoth District Information of School Education (DISE) data, has ranked Lakshadweep on top after evaluating its primary and upper primary education performance. Pondicherry scored the second rank and it was closely followed by Tamil Nadu Sikkim and Karnataka.

The new ranking done by EDI has also revealed the loops of the ranking system followed by HRD ministry, the system judge the states' achievement on the midday meal scheme. HRD's ranking system rated southern states poorly and proclaimed them as laggard. The state government carried out a protest against such a flawed ranking system.

Punjab is one state which is catching up with south and showed immense improvement. The state moved on to the 6th spot, last year Punjab scored 13th position in the list.

But in southern parts, there are few states who slipped down the list due to their performance. The biggest shock came from Kerala as the state rolled down to 14th position as compared to last year's 7th. What led to Kerala's overall poor ranking is the loss in primary education. In primary education, the state's rank went down to 20th from sixth in 2011-12.